What I feel we should do when/if we develope Faster-Than-Light travel
126 replies, posted
Sorry if this is a bad thread/overdone idea, but please bear with me.
While chipping away at the ice today, I was thinking about Space. I was thinking about how everything that we see happened several thousand years ago, and light takes time to travel to our planet from other stars.
My idea is simple. If we could travel faster than light, we could travel away from the Earth untill we were 1,000 light years away. What if, at this point, we turned around and looked back at the Earth? Pardon my ignorance, but wouldn't we see the Earth as it was 1,000 years ago? Could we use this to accurately determine exactly how old the Earth is? And what if we invented crazy powerful telescopes - could we get our first ever glimpse at actual dinosaurs?
So FacePunch, what do you think? Good idea, Bad idea, or Already an idea?
[editline]edit[/editline]
So as to not destroy the Universe, let's assume we have wormholes or something, so we don't have to actually be moving faster than light, just be at a point several thousand lightyears away.
-snip-
Why not just clone dinosaurs?
I mean recreating a species through modified cloning is hard but not breaking laws of physics hard.
[QUOTE=AutoTurret;28196866]We would be traveling faster than light not back into time.
/facepalm[/QUOTE]
Not traveling back in time, merely looking back through time.
We can see other stars as they were thousands of years ago, why couldn't we see Earth thousands of years ago from space?
I've never got my head around this concept to be quite frank. Your eye 'works' because of light, right? Well, if you're travelling faster than the speed of light then surely there's no way the light can reach your eye? Surely you wouldn't see into the past, you'd just see nothing at all?
[QUOTE=Ardosos;28196898]Not traveling back in time, merely looking back through time.
We can see other stars as they were thousands of years ago, why couldn't we see Earth thousands of years ago from space?[/QUOTE]
The light would have a 65 million year head start.
maybe if we're travelling faster than light we have a chance of outrunning space threads
Does that mean that aliens still consider us to be in the middle ages if they manage to look at our planet via a telescope?
Troll science at its finest :buddy:
If we went faster than light wouldn't time around us pass by infinitely fast and we'd instantly die as the universe would end
[QUOTE=Carbon Knight;28196967]The light would have a 65 million year head start.[/QUOTE]
I don't mean looking at Earth as it was 65 million years ago, at least not right away. I mean looking at how it was a mere 1,000 years ago.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;28197017]If we went faster than light wouldn't time around us pass by infinitely fast and we'd instantly die as the universe would end[/QUOTE]
Maybe we could make wormholes, then? It would still technically be faster than light, you just wouldn't be moving faster than light.
sorry to disappoint but dinosaurs were not around 1,000 years ago
no but actually, earth is really fucking small. I doubt you could get far enough away to see it while still being far enough to see millions of years back. Not enough light would be bouncing off the earth in your direction?
[QUOTE=Bletotum;28197051]sorry to disappoint but dinosaurs were not around 1,000 years ago
no but actually, earth is really fucking small. I doubt you could get far enough away to see it while still being far enough to see millions of years back. Not enough light would be bouncing off the earth in your direction?[/QUOTE]
Not 65 million at first! Dinosaurs were just an example.
[QUOTE=Ali Legend;28196945]I've never got my head around this concept to be quite frank. Your eye 'works' because of light, right? Well, if you're travelling faster than the speed of light then surely there's no way the light can reach your eye? Surely you wouldn't see into the past, you'd just see nothing at all?[/QUOTE]
No the light comes from a constant source. The "switch" never turns on. Say a light bulb that we can see turns on 1000 years away right now. We wouldn't see it for another thousand years but if said light bulb has been emitting light, or in Earth's case reflecting, for 4 billion years you'll see old light.
It's impossible to travel faster than light. It's just not physically possible. Sorry.
Interesting stuff, look up the theory of relativity.
Dumbs obviously believe we can travel faster than light :downs:
You'd have to engineer one fucking incredible telescope. And that's not even touching the feasibility of FTL travel.
While your idea is sound, it would not work in practice since the "resolution" would practically be zero = you wouldn't see Earth at all. The photons simply scatter too much.
[QUOTE=Carbon Knight;28196967]The light would have a 65 million year head start.[/QUOTE]
Which is why we would want to travel faster than light in the first place.
If we could travel faster than light, couldn't we escape the black hole we could possibly be in?
Ugh what a thread.
And so many weird replies.
[media]http://trollscience.com/image/f/full/0d33b74675c80eb69c0ca1fb0a3d7ef9.jpg[/media]
Something like this?
Theoretically you're right but half the people that posted don't understand what you're asking.
You could essentially just go 1,000 LY away then come back and skip all the advancements we've made right?
Say you leave in the PS2 era, you'd come back in a Neuro-net or something like that era and the moon would be colonized....it would be like time travel right?
Or is this totally incorrect?
What the fuck is this shit?
I feel the number 1 thing we must do when we obtain faster than light travel...
[B]FUCK QUARIANS[/B]
The thing is if you are travelling faster than light, then you are essentially moving back in time. Can't bother to find the equation.
We already have FTL travel. Just turn on a flashlight and jump backwards.
[QUOTE=RBM11;28197165]No the light comes from a constant source. The "switch" never turns on. Say a light bulb that we can see turns on 1000 years away right now. We wouldn't see it for another thousand years but if said light bulb has been emitting light, or in Earth's case reflecting, for 4 billion years you'll see old light.[/QUOTE]
That's a different concept.
What I'm saying is that if you were right next to the light bulb when it was switched on then surely if you move [b]away[/b] from the light source at or above the speed of light then you will never see the bulb turn on?
[QUOTE=Hazard Fox;28197737]You could essentially just go 1,000 LY away then come back and skip all the advancements we've made right?
Say you leave in the PS2 era, you'd come back in a Neuro-net or something like that era and the moon would be colonized....it would be like time travel right?
Or is this totally incorrect?[/QUOTE]
You are correct.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;28197200]You'd have to engineer one fucking incredible telescope.[/QUOTE]
Pretty much this. If I calculated correctly, 1000 lightyears away Earth would cover only 2.78*10^-7 arcseconds of the sky. Not only that we'll probably never have telescopes with a resolution high enough to even see the Earth from there, let alone distinguish any smaller features, at that point there would be practically no light visible coming from Earth, it would just blend in with all the other noise.
We should resurrect Hitler when we develop faster than light travel.
I think that if we ever developed faster than light travel and looking back on the Earth as it would have been many years ago would probably be very low on the "Things To Do" checklist.
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